I’m sure I heard Mayor Lucas Cleveland comment a while back that the Town’s web site badly needed fixing but so far there’s no sign of anything being done. Parts of it are OK (escribe and engagecobourg) but they are quite separate web sites. Navigation is poor but that’s supposed to be remedied by a search function – except that this has not worked for some months. Part of the problem is that there are many missing items and dead links but the idea is that non-technical staff can do the work of keeping them up to date. What’s needed is a dedicated web site person – that’s in addition to a web site that works properly. And don’t give me the nonsense that web sites are not needed since we have social media.
Why web sites?
For a Town like Cobourg – or any Government body – a web site is a repository of documents like by-laws, budgets, plans, contact information. It can also be a place for news and public notices plus somewhere to pay fines, buy dog licences etc. None of these belong on Facebook or Instagram.
So why are escribe and engagecobourg OK? It’s because they are separate web sites that were designed properly.
For the record, Cobourg’s web site was designed by esolutionsgroup, now owned by GHD – they have re-branded esolutions as GHD Digital.
Light at the end of the tunnel
There’s $15,000 in the operations budget for web site maintenance and $177,000 in the capital budget – perhaps there is an RFP coming out soon? I’d suggest we aim for a new vendor.
Alternatives
In the meantime, you can get some – but nowhere near all – of the Town’s info on these sites:
- Cobourginternet.com – about Cobourg and living in Cobourg
- Cobourgblog.com (this site!)
- Cobourgcalendar.com – a guide to entertainment
These are my sites and they have very few (if any) dead links.
It’s not clear why other sites by esolutions are in better shape – here are some of their nearby sites:
This looks like a monopoly – time for some competition.
Print Article:
As I said in the Engage Cobourg survey, my main source of information is John Draper’s blog. I have tried to use the town website to find information and when it doesn’t work, as is usually the case, I fire off an email to all of council and Brent Larmer and someone answers and gives me the information required.
It’s not 1998 anymore – there’s no software, no expensive web designer – like most websites nowadays, the site is probably built using WordPress which is easy to update and maintain – hire a freelancer to fix the links and maybe retitle some of the pages on the menu so they’re easier to navigate. Boom, done.
Scrap it, start over – not with GHD. Attempts to integrate and or massage new software with the old is reckless and irresponsible (person power, cost).
Before spending a lot of our taxpayer’s money ….. complete user (that would be us) requirements and keep it simple, don’t boil the ocean ….. currently too busy looking and difficult to navigate ….. what 3-5 things that we need on the site? ….. also complete useability tests with a few residents before implementing …… for the rest just call the town
There are a lot of problems with WIFI in this town
many small business will tell you this . But No one listens
Zoom meetings are hard to stay connected
and the same goes for Town Council meetings you get dropped
several times throughout . Where I am we have Fiber through out the homes
but the speeds are so slow and disrupted you can’t even watch Netflix
Why ?? Bell tells us — although we might have Fiber in our homes and pay for Fiber
there is still a lot of Copper through out the Town .
As far as the Towns Web site goes well lets just say every Mayor has taken a Kick at it .
may be its time for a New IT & Web design Team New Broom concept
Its not Rocket science any more
We have Cogeco, and I have never experienced the poor connections you have illustrated. And we probably live less than a block from each other.
Bell FIBE works great here. Sandpiper, all WiFi issues are completely fixable by the business/home owner. I don’t understand why you even mention WiFi.
Your WiFi problems have nothing to do with the functionality or lack thereof of the town website. And if I were you, I’d detach from Bell’s corporate teat — they’re a terrible organization and part of the oligolopy mentality that controls far too much commerce in Canada.
Go to an indie like TekSavvy. Great service at better price.
TekSavvy? They only offer a 60 Mbps cable TV based service in Cobourg (Cogeco reseller?). Their fibre is only available in the Chatham area.
I’m on TekSavvy right now; have been since I moved here. Will never go back to Bell or Rogers unless forced by necessity.
There’s a summary of Internet services here: https://cobourginternet.com/business/internet-service-providers
Note that not all Cogeco and Bell Services are reviewed. Only Bell and Cogeco have wire infrastructure – so (e.g.) Tek Savvy provides service using Bell or Cogeco lines/cables.
I dunno… it doesn’t seem that bad to me. Granted, I browse it on my phone and I’m looking for super basic things like garbage collection times and parking etc. I mostly use social media and I think they could post a bit more frequently on Insta etc. I guess my question is now much do we as a town want to spend and exactly what is it we want the site to do?
I know I’m in the minority (but not alone) in not using social media and the only way I get news of what’s going on @ the Town is John’s blog – thank heavens for all the work, time and expertise he devotes to it and reporting on Council meetings.
I do not find the web site “non-techie user” friendly, have great difficulty getting onto Council meetings through the escribe link and, when I do, I can’t hear the dialogue despite having the volume on my lap top on100% – I have complained to the Town about the quality of transmission to no avail. With no daily newspaper design and regular maintenance of the web site should be a top priority for the Town.
There is total agreement about the nonsense statement regarding the association or the focus on social media. Businesses and Corporations, since its inception, have deteriorated rather than improved.
I think that you are being overly generous in your assessment of eScribe! For example:
There is almost no material — bylaws, Council minutes, reports, etc — from prior to 2020. Material including Council minutes and bylaws back to 1970 was on Civic Web and readily searchable.The eScribe search capability is almost useless. Insofar as I know one cannot search using approximate match, cannot search by date, cannot search for documents containing specified words in close proximity, cannot search for documents not containing specified words, etc, etc. All of these capabilities were available in Civic Web.One can watch but not easily download video of previous meetings.
There is no excuse for broken links. There are dozens of both free and very low cost (<$100) programs to automatically check all links on a website. Why are these programs not run at least weekly and the errors fixed?
Never mind the complaints about the system as we have it now is the material contained in Civicweb still available or is it in the ‘ether’?
The problem is, as every web designer knows, there are no industry standards for web design and taking over somebody else’s design is an absolute nightmare. So good luck to anybody who wants this job, especially if the RFP specifies the incorporation of historical material.
Ken S. & Ben,
Hopefully the old civic web data still exists.
Assuming the Town has custody of the data (a big if) the challenge will be to make it accessible in eScirbe. The data files themselves shouldn’t be a problem. They are mainly PDFs, and other standard document files along with some video, pictures and scanned documents. The challenge will be organizing them.
Usually when an organization makes a major software/platform change, a migration plan is made to “move” the data to the new system. This is done before the new system is brought online. That it didn’t happen in the Town’s case indicates a major project management failure.
Hopefully there is a remedy and it can be implemented soon.
To date, lots of talk and little action.
Recently Brent told me: “….stay tuned for a new dedicated Council/Corporate Open Governance Site similar to what the Town had prior to the switch to eSCRIBE with all records”. Meanwhile, you can access many of the by-Laws via this page: https://cobourginternet.com/council/by-law-guide
John, we are grateful for your work! However, expecting that engaged residents rather than the town will make bylaws available to everyone is completely unacceptable.